


Feeling

by nataliaket



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Amputation, Body Horror, Gen, Helmsman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nataliaket/pseuds/nataliaket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are sure you used to have fingers, but you honestly really can't be sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feeling

You think you remember having fingers. Sure, psionics can type for you, but where’s the satisfaction in that. It was so easy to sit back and just let the red and blue dance their way across the keyboards for you. But that was for everyday hacking, your last jobs? The ones that landed you here? Those were the ones where you pulled your chair up, cracked your knuckles, and let the assholes who thought their puny firewalls could stop you have what was coming. Send them all crying back to their lusii, you were that good, always bragging to Karkat about your late and great exploits. You were simply the best.

Except you weren’t.

You got cocky, well cockier than usual, and thought that you could do it all. You thought you could take down the entire system by single 1’s and 0’s. Oh, you were so young and naïve. 

You remember having feet. You know you had feet. Because feet meant that aa was still alive. And it is one of the very few things you are absolutely certain was real, that aa was real, that she dragged you along on whatever the expedition of the week was, even if you still had blisters from the week before. You had feet. This you are 100% certain of. And there aren’t a lot of those kinds of things left in your life.

You know now that you don’t have feet or hands, if you even had them in the first place. There are days where you would swear up and down to any legislacerator who deigned to visit your humble block that you were hatched and have always been a part of the machine, of the empire. You were made and trained to be a cog in the system. Simply replacing some other worn piece of machinery, as you’ll one day be replaced. That there is no life outside the machine, at least not for you anyway, that kind of life isn’t given to those in the machine. You would swear that you imagined everything, even sometimes aa, you imagined hands and feet. You imagined the power you wielded with everything you typed across your screens. You imagined sand between your toes, wet pavement on your roof as you tried to keep hold of the sticky can of mind honey for your lusus. Maybe sometimes you would suck on the remaining honey that found its way onto your fingers, just enough for you to feel that freedom of your hands and psionics working together to get past anything the digital world could throw at you. No barriers could stand before you when that happened.

Except that one that did. The one you could never knock down. The one that landed you here.

And so you spend your days here, as a cog in the machine, hanging in the midst of your bio-cables. You are a torso, a sad remain of a body keeping alive the only part of you that ever holds any meaning. All they really need is your mind anyway, no feet, no hands, such things are extraneous and were promptly removed. One more step away from the life that you sometimes think you imagined. Until you can remember the sand, and the rain, and the honey, and you hold onto those memories before you do lose yourself into the machine.

Sometimes you think you wouldn’t mind losing yourself into the machine. Letting go of tactile memories and just living in a world made of binary. Lose your self in the midst of the rumblings of the ships and the chatter. Just keep the hull running smoothly, a simple life, very few expectations, and the rules were very clear. You hate rules. But they make sure to let you know right away what the rules are, and there is no bending these ones. You laughed when they first had to move the shocks after you burnt out your first pain receptors. Things don’t hurt as much anymore.

Did you ever really run? Was the feeling of the smooth plastic under your fingers ever actually real? Have you ever felt anything other than the wet slime of the bio-flesh and the shock of pain when you mess anything up?

You don’t really know anymore. You gave up remembering a long time ago.

But, then you do. You feel again. Because something new is here. New is wrong though, new has no place in the machine. You retreat and wait for the shocks, the screaming in your head that you’re WRONG WRONG WRONG. You were made only for the machine!

But, it never comes, the screaming. Instead, oh, someone is touching your face. Oh. Touch. You do remember touch. Attempting to open your eyes is a very different pain. Your eyelids have grown together, but you can feel someone pulling off the headset that has made your head its home for you’ve forgotten how many sweeps. You think you may be slightly masochistic after you realize that the pull of the bio-flesh from your face hurts, but damn it feels good. Like ripping off a very old bandage adhesive strip. When was the last time you had one of those.

Oh, and now you’re falling. Good planning here guys, just let you fall flat to the floor, your dignity would be all gone at this point. If you had any. Except, you don’t hit the floor, because someone has caught you and is now hugging you, very tight. Ow. Ease off there. You attempt to flail a bit, though this doesn’t work very well as you are basically a glorified torso. And you are once again caught in marveling at just touching someone. The feel of someone else’s skin against yours. You will admit to tears.

This is not the machine. You were never raised for the machine. You were raised for this, to touch, feel something beyond your own boundaries. You were made to make contact with others.

And then you can feel again, your fingers can race across the keys. You can run on your own feet again, though still not very far because you are a gangly ass thing even now. Your limbs are metal now and you occasionally have to put up with STRONG maintenance, but that is all a blip in your mind. In your mind that is not the machine, that lets your fingers dance and your toes wiggle, because your mind can finally feel again and feeling is what you really needed.


End file.
